Toronto mayor: ‘I do not use crack’

The conservative mayor of Canada’s largest city, after keeping silent for a week, called a no-questions news conference on Friday to deny reports that he had used crack cocaine.

“I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I addicted to crack cocaine,” said Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who has been embroiled in near-constant controversy since he was elected in 2010. The nayor’s remarks were reported by CBC-TV.

The mayor claimed it was “business as usual at city” hall, even though Ford fired his chief-of-staff Mark Towhey on Thursday and had Towhey escorted from city hall. Towhey had reportedly urged Ford to “get help.”

Earlier this month, the gossip site Gawker and the Toronto Star were shown a video by a person who claimed he sold drugs to the mayor. Shown to two Star journalists, the video reportedly showed Ford inhaling from a glass crack pipe. The alleged dealer offered the video for a price of $200,000. The Star refused to pay. Gawker has been soliciting donations.

Until Friday, Ford had only paused to say the allegation was “ridiculous” and part of an effort by the Star to get him. He has refused to speak with reporters from the newspaper.

Ford is no stranger to controversy. The Star reported the mayor was asked to leave a recent fund-raising because he appeared inebriated. When a CBC-TV comedy show arrived in his driveway to conduct a mock interview — a ritual to which even Prime Minister Stephen Harper has succumbed — Ford called the police.

The mayor has already suffered another indignity. He was dismissed this week from his moonlighting job as a high school football coach, the Don Bosco Eagles. Parents at the high school apparently took offense at Ford’s remarks in a TV interview that kids would be in jail or in gangs were he not coaching them on the gridiron.